Outpatient prescription medication treatments are relied upon heavily for increased quality of life and lower lifetime healthcare costs. Medical experts have long held that taking at least 80% of a prescribed drug is required to achieve desired therapeutic outcomes and lower lifetime healthcare costs. For example, a patient who faithfully takes cholesterol-reducing medicine significantly reduces the likelihood of a coronary event that has attendant cost-intensive medical procedures and diminished quality of life. Outpatients strongly desire to avoid such events and hospital stays, yet only 20% of all outpatients take their prescription medicines according to doctor's instructions.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers also stand to gain from increased outpatient medication compliance in the form of increased medication sales. Accordingly, these manufacturers are actively investing in and testing compliance-increase techniques. A marketing executive at one major pharmaceutical company said that his market research has documented that patients want to comply, but will not take on the burden of any additional actions or otherwise change behavior.
For these reasons, a need exists for reminder mechanisms for increasing patient compliance with dosing regimens. In particular, a need exists for reminder mechanisms that place little or no burden on the patient and that are sufficiently low cost to be practical for use in commercial product applications.